Biology (Page 12)

A guide to life, on Earth and beyond, including the top news about plants, animals, and physiology.

Latest in Biology

Chimpanzee playing a number-based game on a touch screen

Like humans, chimps often perform tasks differently when crowds are watching

a lone coyote in a forest looks into a camera lense

Coyotes appear to be thriving under pressure

By Laura Baisas

Astrocytes; neuroglial cells, 250X at 35mm.

‘Swiss army knife’ of the brain: How star-shaped cells reshape our understanding of memory

brain scans of people watching clips from movies

MIT maps how the brain experiences movies

By Laura Baisas

Human tissue sample created in 3D bioprinter

Bioprinting breakthrough uses acoustic waves to create lab-grown human tissue

Illustration of a terror bird standing by river

Meat-eating terror birds could grow up to 12 feet tall

a small bat glides over water

How these tiny bats use a sound map to navigate

By Laura Baisas

a white fungus with large red droplets that look like blood

That’s not blood, it’s a fungus oozing excess juice

By Laura Baisas

a tadpole swimming

A rock in Argentina turns out to be the oldest tadpole fossil ever found

By Laura Baisas

Thalattosuchian skulls. Showing the semi-aquatic species (A and B), and the fully aquatic metriorhynchid (C).

Why don’t we have deep sea crocodiles?

a large rat wearing a red vest holds a dark, round, ball

Giant three-pound rats trained to sniff out illegal poaching

By Laura Baisas

a brown and black spider money sits in a green and leafy tree with a large, round, yellow fruit in its mouth

‘Drunk’ animals might be more common

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Lomankus edgecombei. This arthropod lived about 538 to 485 million years ago in dark and low-oxygen environments.

450-million-year-old arthropod found preserved in fool’s gold

By Laura Baisas

Silhouette of a loving couple hugging and kissing at sunset on the beach.

The origins of kissing may have a lot to do with body hair

Hydra vulgaris.

Are any animals truly ‘immortal’? These creatures defy biological time.

By Lauren Leffer

a rider in a headless horseman costume rides by yellow fall leaves

The Headless Horseman shares her secrets

By Laura Baisas

Tardigrades were exposed to heavy doses of gamma rays—high-energy photons that are one form of ionizing radiation—and researchers then studied how their systems responded.

Researchers start to unravel the secrets of tardigrade radiation resilience

yellow pollen shooting out of a red flower

Plants could be manipulating sperm in completely new ways

By Laura Baisas

two stalk-eyed flies fight on a stick. these flies have long antennae with eyeballs on the tips

Flies with shorter eye-stalks act aggressively because females are less attracted to them

By Laura Baisas

a close up of four pieces of sliced bread

Our love of delicious carbs may go back 800,000 years

By Laura Baisas

A photograph showing two big and two little Pyrocystis noctiluca.

Why these plankton puff up to 6x bigger than normal

By Laura Baisas

surgical equipment on table

Autopsy of 78-year-old man reveals he had three penises

a blue whale skeleton on display at a museum

Blue whale skeleton still leaking oil, 26 years after death

By Laura Baisas

a musuem exhibit with a dinosaur skeleton. a picture of actor jeff goldblum saying "that is a one big pile of poop" is in the lower left.

The Poozeum: Fossilized bug farts, T. rex poop, and more ancient coprolites

By Laura Baisas

An illustration showing an imposing fully-grown male Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus wandering India’a Kashmir Valley, 400,000 years ago, towering over a herd of Central Asian red deer. In the distance, a small band of prehistoric humans set up a campfire to cook their meal.

Mysterious elephant species uncovered with 87 prehistoric stone tools

By Laura Baisas

a small frog with light green coloring and dark spots sits on a green leaf

Seven new frog species named for their ‘Star Trek’-esque calls

By Laura Baisas

Fungi growing on circle and cross arrangement wood blocks

A simple experiment revealed the complex ‘thoughts’ of fungi

a lion skull with a close up on its teeth. one of the bottom teeth has a large black cavity.

These lions devoured 28 humans, wildebeest, and more in 1898

By Laura Baisas

a finch with a sharp beak and dark plumage holds a round seed in its beak

Scientists simulate calls of ‘future finches’

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a large hawk-like bird carrying a long tailed rodent in its claws

With fearsome feet, hawk-sized Cretaceous birds could scoop up baby dinos

By Laura Baisas

five toothbrushes in a cup on a bathroom sink

The next lifesaving antibiotic might be a virus on your toothbrush

By Laura Baisas

Spicy foods: The unlikely new frontier in placebo research

two oval comb jellyfish fusing together as one

Two comb jellies can fuse together into one–and keep both butts

By Laura Baisas

This picture shows many tiny cells in which DNA is abundantly included inside the cells.

Oldest living microbes found in 2-billion-year-old rock

Geckos have a ‘sixth sense’

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a pterosaur with a short tail walking with legs and its wings on the ground

The first true flying vertebrates walked before they could soar

By Laura Baisas

a grayish brown wombat walking next to shrubs

Can wombats kill with their butts? We found the hard truth.

By Laura Baisas

choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa

We are family: Tracing the evolution of animals

By Amber Dance/Knowable Magazine

a microscope image of a small crustacean with a round body, two large antennae come from its head, and several small legs

Sorry, zooplankton don’t want to eat your poop

By Laura Baisas

a dolphin in a tank with an open mouth

Bottlenose dolphins ‘smile’ to say it’s time to play

By Laura Baisas

3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain.

Scientists mapped every neuron of an adult animal’s brain for the first time

Popular Science, December 1943

In 1928, the discovery of ‘mold juice’ would go on to save 500 million lives

By Bill Gourgey

A cell undergoing apoptosis is seen in the center of the image surrounded by other normal cells.Shaded Lighter.

Your cells are dying. All the time.

By Amber Dance/Knowable Magazine

a sea robin fish with wide pectoral fins and six crab-like legs

This fish has 6 legs that act like tongues

By Laura Baisas

a CT scan of two jaw fossils from early mammals

A 225-million-year-old fossilized jaw joint shifts evolutionary timeline

By Laura Baisas

a spook-fish with a narrow snout and large pectoral fins

Boo! New species of ghost shark uncovered in New Zealand

By Laura Baisas

dark and finger-like fungi arise from under a piece of wood

Is this the creepiest fungus in the forest? Yes, definitely.

By Laura Baisas

Close up of memory crystal disc encoded with human genome

In case of extinction, scientists store human genome on a ‘memory crystal’ that lasts billions of years

Biobots could one day be engineered to deliver drugs and clear up arterial plaque.

How biobots arise from the cells of dead organisms

By Peter A Noble and Alex Pozhitkov / The Conversation

a snake with an open mouth and visible fangs

New tool helps scientists identify venomous snakes

By Laura Baisas

a Byrde's whale surfaces to breathe in the Pacific Ocean

Elusive whale’s vocalization could be their version of ‘Marco Polo’

By Laura Baisas

a small baby pygmy hippopotamus sits on the ground

Humans likely wiped out Cyprus’ tiny hippos and elephants in record time

By Laura Baisas

Water anole breathing through air bubble underwater

This lizard’s skin creates an underwater bubble helmet

Concrete material with hollow tube design

Bone-like, hollow concrete design makes it 5.6 times stronger

a red fish with a grumpy expression and large teeth

Seriously grumpy-faced fish discovered in Red Sea

By Laura Baisas

a polar bear cub comes out of a den with its paw up

Polar bears adapted to the Arctic just 70,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

A Syntretus perlmani wasp larva bursts from a fruit fly’s abdomen.

Gnarly wasp gruesomely rips apart fruit flies from the inside out with its larvae

By Laura Baisas

a reservoir in colombia with very low water levels due to drought

Mega El Niños helped kill 90 percent of life on Earth

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a long gray coelacanth swimming in its native habitat

The ‘living fossil’ that thrived during a mass extinction

By Laura Baisas

neanderthal teeth in a cave

Neanderthals’ social isolation may have sped up their extinction

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a small bird with light brown, black, and white plummage. it has a long beak with sharp teeth

‘Weird’ prehistoric bird had a weaponized beak with teeth

By Laura Baisas

Mini mum is one of the smallest frogs in the world, described by Mark D. Scherz and his colleagues in 2019. These tiny frogs from southeastern Madagascar live in amongst the leaf litter and feed on tiny mites. They are amongst the target species of the GEMINI project, because their closest relatives are ten times larger.

Researchers want to unlock genetics of the world’s tiniest animals

Electrostatic hydraulic robot leg

Oil-filled ‘muscles’ give this robot leg a spring in its step

an x-ray image of an eel escaping from a fish's stomach

Watch an eel escape a fish’s stomach through its gills

By Laura Baisas